MINDLESS SINNER – Turn On The Power

A lot of various articles get posted at Metal Express Radio on a daily basis. Many of them are album reviews, which in turn are mostly freshly released ones or ones awaiting their release. But sometimes it also happens that albums from rather distant past get to have their review done only just now. One of those albums needed to wait whole 35 years to have their debut album reviewed by Metal Express Radio. Here’s the bunch of old school Swedish metallers called Mindless Sinner with their 1986 debut album Turn on the Power, or, to be more precise: its vinyl rerelease.

Considering how much of a rip-off quite many modern bands are (some have even been reviewed here at Metal Express Radio), the above fact did need to be pointed out. Because if one was listening to Turn on the Power and being convinced that Mindless Sinner are a new band, they wouldn’t have been much likely to approve of them. Rip-offs are generally nothing to be adored which is why such bands as Greta Van Fleet or Airborne are not taken too seriously by many of those who dig Led Zeppelin or AC/DC. One could think “Yeah, another bunch of 80s wannabees”. Wrong. Turn on the Power was released around the same time as Metallica’s Master of Puppets. So all those who do not like rip-offs can give a sigh of relief: this is a proper blast from the past!

The album starts with a song titled “We Go Together”. It sounds very much like a mix of such Hard Rock legends as Scorpions or Savatage, with a nice hint of Judas Priest. Tight rhythm section, predatory riffs and the bass not being too low make it all sound very decent to say the least. This song is just oozing the pure Hard Rock energy. It only gets a little bit worse when the vocals come in. The singer seems to struggle to hit some of the notes nicely. He’s not bad, although the vocals in the very first line might bring the famous/infamous cover of “The Final Countdown” by Europe to mind. Luckily the vocals are getting better with every second that passes. Perhaps the singer just needed a proper warm-up. A cigarette is supposed to help sometimes.

The next song is titled “I’m Gonna (Have Some Fun)” and whoever it was that wrote it, one thing is for sure: they must have been into Mötley Crüe massively, because that song sounds very much like “Looks That Kill” off their 1983 record Shout At The Devil. There’s nothing wrong with that, after all it is an amazing song. Or maybe all similarities are a pure coincidence? Either way, that song is the only one to remind of any other band this much.

It’s hard to say whether there is anything that makes Turn on the Power stand out from the crowd of Hard Rock bands of the 80s. But even if there’s nothing that does, the album can still be classified as one of those that came out back in those magical days when music was still awesome and most of the musicians actually had some talent. It is full of beautiful and tasty Hard Rock/Power Metal solos with a nice hint of Glam Metal to them (perhaps a term “Glamtastic” should be coined for them?), decent bass lines… and the singer can indeed hit some high notes like he does in the song “Here She Comes Again” being the track number 6, or the third one, which is also the self-titled composition. Overall, Mindless Sinner definitely do deserve respect and a bit more recognition than they’ve got. Listening to Turn on the Power will definitely bring older listeners back to the days when Queen still toured and Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe was still one of the best looking men out there. And as far as all younger listeners go… they’ll just close their eyes wishing they could have been born a decade or two earlier.